There are plenty Indian foods that became a part of Malaysian cuisine. One of them is apom or appam. To share you this variety of Indian Fermented Rice Pancake, I have Ribbon and Circus who owns beautiful blog with surely mouth-drooling pictures.

I always want my guest post has a childhood memory of the food. RC has picked one of them and willingly to share with us. Let see what’s the story behind the apom/appam that she shares.

PS: You may noticed I haven’t blogged for a while. At this moment, I’m still holidaying in Indonesia; enjoying all the foods that I miss.

Hi, I’m RC from Ribbon & Circus, a photographic kitchen affairs blog. I was so excited and flattered when I received an e-mail from Pepy, inviting me to be one of her guest post. I was jumping all over the place…ahem…before I replied her. 😛 It really is an honor to be featured in this amazing blog.

I’ve listed a few dishes to be shared here, but when the idea of making an apom sprang out, I immediately knew that’s the one.

Meet my first Appam. I grew up calling this light Indian pancake as Apom. Little did I knew that it is more known as Appam. Apom or Appam is an Indian traditional bowl-shaped pancake made from fermented rice and coconut milk. Its yeasty dough, which has to be leaved fermented overnight, yields an aromatic, soft pillowy center, and a crispy round edge pancake. This breakfast staples, however, are no longer common if you were to compare it with roti pratha or nasi lemak in this side of the world.

This appom has lots to do with my childhood. It really reminds me of my late grandma. She used to make this as our breakfast and she eventually started a small home business herself. Nothing beats her perfect apoms. And I’m not being biased when I said that. The crispy part of her pancake nearly looked like a lace. I usually ate the center part first with sloping curry and saved the crispy edge for later.

I wish I had my grandma’s recipe with me, but I don’t. In fact, this recipe is shared by my local provision shop owner, Emily. On my first try, I used my iron wok to work the apom, but the batter stuck on it, alas, failed miserably. I picked up myself for another trial, and this time, the same thing happened again. That’s when I figured out that I need to have an appam pan. I went back to the provision shop and poured the sad story to Emily. Eventually, she and her husband are kind enough to offer me their appam pan. Of course I said no..at first..:P

Finally, on my third attempt, it was a success. The taste is there, almost there, but not close enough to my grandma’s. The look are far beyond compare also. That makes me miss Mima’s apom even more. The last time I ate her apom was about 15 years ago.

Nenek Mima, these are for you. I don’t know how you did it. But this is the closest I get to your apom.

Ingredients:
1 tin of broken rice, soaked for few hours
A handful of cooked rice
1 small coconut-take both water and pulp
salt accordingly
2 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon coconut milk
1/2 teaspoon yeast mixed with 1/4 water-do it later

Methods:
Blend all ingredients except yeast until thin/smooth.
Pour the mixture into a basin. (Note: make sure your basin is big because the batter will double)- Set aside
Mix well the yeast with water and pour it into the basin of mixture.
Cover and leave it overnight. The best place would be beside the fridge.

Next cook it

Ladle the batter into the pan, and swirl the pan to create the crusty edge. Cover it and let it cook for 2 mins or until the centre fluff and the edge brown.

12 Comments

Thanks for sharing. Perhaps there were so much foods to enjoy in Malaysia that I’d missed this. But If those apoms I saw were as beautiful as these ones, I’d definitely give it a try (hmm, seemed I’d tried without the ‘lace’). By the way, just wonder how much is a tin refer to.
Enjoy your holiday!

Welcome to Indonesia Eats

Indonesia Eats is written and photographed by Pepy Nasution; an Indonesian-born Winnipeg (Canada)-based food photographer.

A collection of Indonesian and Asian recipes with style, eye-catching photographs and personal stories about cooking Indonesian and being Indonesian away from home. Indonesia Eats is a memoir of her homeland.